Two Look at Two | |
by Robert Frost | |
LOVE and forgetting might have carried them | |
A little further up the mountain side | |
With night so near, but not much further up. | |
They must have halted soon in any case | |
5 |
With thoughts of the path back, how rough it was |
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness; | |
When they were halted by a tumbled wall | |
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this, | |
Spending what onward impulse they still had | |
10 |
In one last look the way they must not go, |
On up the failing path, where, if a stone | |
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself; | |
No footstep moved it. "This is all," they sighed, | |
"Good-night to woods." But not so; there was more. | |
15 |
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them |
Across the wall, as near the wall as they. | |
She saw them in their field, they her in hers. | |
The difficulty of seeing what stood still, | |
Like some up-ended boulder split in two, | |
20 |
Was in her clouded eyes: they saw no fear there. |
She seemed to think that two thus they were safe. | |
Then, as if they were something that, though strange, | |
She could not trouble her mind with too long, | |
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall. | |
25 |
"This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?" |
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait. | |
A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them | |
Across the wall as near the wall as they. | |
This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril, | |
30 |
Not the same doe come back into her place. |
He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head, | |
As if to ask, "Why don't you make some motion? | |
Or give some sign of life? Because you can't. | |
I doubt if you're as living as you look." | |
35 |
Thus till he had them almost feeling dared |
To stretch a proffering hand — and a spell-breaking. | |
Then he too passed unscared along the wall. | |
Two had seen two, whichever side you spoke from. | |
"This must be all." It was all. Still they stood, | |
40 |
A great wave from it going over them, |
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favor | |
Had made them certain earth returned their love. |
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From the Perscribo.com online eBook: New Hampshire by Robert Frost BACK TO TOP |
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Transcribed and formatted for Internet reading, with addition of line numbers and edits to footnotes, from the 1923 (Henry Holt and Company) hardcover edition of New Hampshire by Robert Frost.